The big swath of plastic below the keyboard (you know, the palmrest area) on my Thinkpad R61e now squeaks when I put my right hand on it, making the whole thing feel filmsy and cheap.
This is bothersome. Legendary Thinkpad (IBM/Lenovo/whatever) engineering appears to have gone the way of the crappy $600 laptop. I'm disappointed.
The moral of the story: don't settle for the bargain-basement Thinkpads anymore. It seems the X61s are still really solid (these are in regular use around my office), but the R61s just don't cut it.
It's a pretty sad state of affair at the moment in the laptop industry. I haven't been too impressed with the latest T series either. On the other hand, I would like to give props to the OLPC(one laptop per child) foundation for designing a sturdy and functional laptop for children. I got into the buy one give one program and received one of these units. I was fairly impressed with the amount of ingenuity that went into the thing.
I've heard lots of great stuff about the hardware on those machines. But how is the keyboard? In all of the pictures I've seen, it looks like one of those awful rubber roll-up keyboards.
Fantastic if you've got to worry about dirt and water getting into your keyboard—less fantastic if you don't.
I think the drop in Thinkpad quality was pretty much coincident with the move to Lenovo. I'm bummed too; there is no longer a laptop manufacturer I feel confident buying from without using someone else's for awhile first.
All I know is that my Dell Latitude X1 (fanless) gets so hot that it starts cooking my legs and there's a bacon smell and I need something else. My two thinkpads (a 600X and a T41) are now getting old enough to be too frustrating to use.
Yeah, that's fair--even the older entry-level IBM models were solid before Lenovo took over. But, the high-end model still seem to have great build quality.
As for the Dell, you can either baste your nuts in olive oil or wrap them in aluminum or tin foil. Either way, they'll stay moist and tender even under the hottest of laptops.
P.S. holy shit you still have that 600X?
Re OLPC: The keyboard is _tiny_. It hurts my hands even now just thinking about trying to type anything on that thing. Perfect for kids though. And it's got a bit of that roll-up keyboard "thing" going on, but it doesn't feel cheap and flimsy, like a roll-up keyboard does. And yeah, the R series thinkpad is no good. Gotta stay with the X and T series - specifically the "p" versions.
Rob - do you have an OLPC? If so can I try it sometime?
Hmm ... I just realized that I don't actually know which Rob you are. So yeah if this is Rob H or Rob W my questions stand ;)
Sorry Layla, it's that old scoundrel Rob E. :o) Next time you see Will though, be sure to demand that he bring it with him.